New Blood Page 10

Smiling at his own foolishness, Jax eyed the sun’s position. Noon was long past. His stomach screamed its unhappiness at his neglect. He wasn’t nearly far enough down the mountain to suit him, and Miss Whitcomb still hadn’t woken up.

  Watching the sky instead of his step, Jax put a foot wrong, and the rocks rolled, sending him skidding. He dropped the box, trusting the machine to its latches and the lady’s magic, and grabbed for Miss Whitcomb, desperate to keep her from hitting the rocks face first. Down they slid, and rolled, and tumbled, the case crashing alongside, Jax taking the worst of it, he hoped, with his arms wrapped round his sorceress’s head.

  Finally, he got his feet pointed downhill long enough to dig them in and bring them to a slow, unsteady halt. For a few minutes, he lay there with Miss Whitcomb draped across his body while he fought for air. He could feel her breath warm against his neck, so he hadn’t killed her. He realized then that he could feel most of Miss Whitcomb warm against most of him, including that recently awakened unruly part that she feared.

  Jax shifted, sliding his hips from beneath hers, taking care they didn’t go tumbling downhill again. Surveying their surroundings, he saw a somewhat level spot to the right, anchored by a gray, lichen-spotted boulder. Now, if he could only reach it with Miss Whitcomb in tow.

  He took another moment to relish the feel of his mistress’s lithe body in his arms, her cheek resting soft against his. She was never so close or pliant when awake. He liked her strength. But he liked her this way too. Except for the unconscious bit. He didn’t like that at all. He wished she would wake up.

  With a deep breath, and a pause to dig his heels deeper into the porous earth, Jax stood, Miss Whitcomb draped over his arms. Testing each step, he bore her to the boulder’s shelter and laid her gently in the deep-piled leaves of countless years past. He brushed her hair out of her face—she’d lost most of her hairpins in that tumble, if she hadn’t lost them before—and studied the scrapes and bruises he found. Only some of them were new from the fall. The scrapes, mostly.

  Jax spit on a corner of his blanket-cloak and dabbed at the blood seeping from the rawest scrape. Her poor face. He wished for cold water and clean rags to tend it for her. Might as well wish for the moon, or the magic to heal her, for all the good his wishing did. He went after a spot of dirt and she moaned, pushing his hand away.

  Jax did not jump up to dance a jig, no matter how much he wanted to. “Miss Whitcomb?” He smoothed her hair behind her ear again, where the breeze had disturbed it. “Miss Whitcomb, can you hear me? Can you wake?”

  She didn’t respond. He didn’t want to hurt her again, but he wanted her awake. That much magic that much out of control…

  Gently, he shook her. “Miss Whitcomb. Amanusa.”

  “What?” The word was half moan, half plaintive whine.

  “Time to wake up, my dear.” Jax cringed when he heard himself say it, dreading her reaction. But maybe she didn’t hear it. “Amanusa, wake up.”

  She screwed her face into an adorable grimace. “Don’t want to. Head hurts. Sun’s too bright.”

  Jax shaded her eyes with his hand. “I’m sorry your head hurts, but we must leave Transylvania before what’s left of Szabo’s outlaws catches up with us. So you must wake up.”

  She lifted one eyelid to squint at him. “Oh. It’s you.”

  “I’m afraid so.” He gave her a little smile. “Other than your head and your battered face, how do you feel? Do you think you can walk?”

  Amanusa—Miss Whitcomb groaned her way up to a sitting position, swiveling to lean against the big rock at her back. “I’ll have to, won’t I?” She squinted at their surroundings, shading her own eyes. “Where are we?”

  “Just over half the distance back to your cottage. I would have cut cross country to the railhead at Nagy Szeben, but I didn’t know the way.”

  “I don’t either. And I want some things from my house if we have time to get them. What happened? How did we get here?” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion rather than sunlight. “Did you carry me?”

  “How else do you suppose I got you here?” Jax shocked himself with the retort. But he was tired of her endless suspicion and knew by now that she wouldn’t punish him for impudence. “As for what happened—you let loose a bloody great pile of wild magic without putting any controls on it, is what you did. And when it finished punishing everybody it thought needed punishing, it smacked back into you. Hard.

  “What did you think you were doing?” he demanded, his hours of worry overwhelming him. “You can’t let magic go like that without putting any controls on it, without edging it round with commands and limits. You just threw it out there and let it do whatever its heart desired. Except magic doesn’t have a heart. It doesn’t care who called it. It could have killed you just as easily as it killed everybody else.”

  She stared up at him, eyes wide and filled to the brim with tears, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Oh dear. He couldn’t cope with tears.

  “Don’t cry, Miss Whitcomb.” Jax shoved a hand back through his too-long mop of hair, wishing he dared take her into his arms again. “Please don’t. I—”

  “Amanusa.” She interrupted him with a touch on his arm. “Anyone who’s shared a tent with me for five weeks and carried me halfway down a mountain has to know me well enough to use my given name.”

  The smile crept up on him and pounced. “Amanusa.” He nodded, trying to hide just how pleased the privilege made him.

  She was biting her lip again, looking frightened. “Did it truly kill everyone?”

  “No.” Jax looked over his shoulder for signs of pursuit. “Not everyone. Teo’s dead, and that Gavril chap—”

  “Good.” Amanusa nodded with satisfaction, and winced, raising a hand to her head.

  Jax knew how much it must hurt and wished he could help. Maybe if she knew the rest. “But there’s others that lived. Most of the women. A few of the men, maybe. I didn’t take the time to check. The ones it didn’t kill got knocked back right smart. I was more concerned with getting you out of there before they began to recover. And Szabo wasn’t there, remember?”

  “Let’s hope he hasn’t come back yet.” Her tone soured. “He wouldn’t want to be back until everything was over.”

  “The bastard.” Jax didn’t usually hold grudges—he couldn’t remember anything well enough. This one he could. A man couldn’t keep his hands clean by doing as Szabo did.

  “Jax—” Amanusa was searching the mountain’s slope. “Did you get that machine? Or did you have to leave it behind?”

  “No, it’s here somewhere. I dropped it when I fell.” He stood and looked uphill, where he remembered seeing it last. It was several yards farther down, wedged between two close-growing birches. “There it is. I’ll get it.”

  A scramble up, a slide back down, and he presented the still-latched case to his sorceress. “Your magic warded it well.”

  She shook it, listening to the clank inside. “Do you suppose the tumble broke anything?”

  “I don’t know. Nor do I care to find out.”

  “Me neither.” Amanusa handed the box back to him, then held her hand out for an assist. She must truly feel bad, for she usually refused help. “Let’s get moving. Sun’s flying westerly.”

  Jax pulled her up and steadied her on her feet. “As you will, Miss Whitcomb.”

  She gave him a stern look. “Who?”

  His smile felt shy. “Amanusa.”

  He gestured for her to take the lead, and with cautious steps, she did.

  Chapter 7

  In Paris, at that very moment, a barrel-chested man in a black bowler hat and brown tweed suit stood at the center of a wide boulevard. Behind him, a breeze off the Seine rustled the leaves of the chestnut trees planted along the sidewalks, filling the air with green scents of summer overlaying the dank, familiar smells of river and city. Before him, the trees reached barren, brittle limbs to the sky in a silent, futile plea for help. Even the bark had sloughed off, leaving the wood
dead and gray, like driftwood still anchored in soil.

  Henry Tomlinson, who preferred to be called Harry, scowled as he studied the barren terrain before him. “Dalcourt, how big did you say this dead zone was?” he asked, without turning to look at his companion.

  “Five of the city’s blocks.” The Frenchman was a fraction shorter than Harry and far leaner, dressed in dapper black and white. “It has grown at a rate of perhaps a meter each fortnight.”

  “How big is a meter?” Harry muttered.

  Dalcourt held up his hands to illustrate.

  “About a yard then.” Harry nodded. He put up his own hands, palms out as if feeling for a barrier. “When—?”

  “The first endroit de la mort appeared—pardon, I spoke wrong—it became noticeable approximately a year ago. The conseil is certain that it existed for far longer, but was too small to notice, too small to kill.” Dalcourt watched the Englishman intently. “What are you doing? Can you sense the endroit?”

  “Not here.” Harry propped his hands on his hips and scowled. “Not on the edges, but when I’m farther in, yeah. Any magician can.”

  “You are un alchemiste, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Yeah. Which means I can pick up on the magic inherent in things, in stone and brick and dirt. There’s magic in the air too.” He stabbed a finger at the dead zone in front of him. “But not in there, there ain’t. It’s all dead.” He paused. “There’s not anybody livin’ in there anymore, right?”

  “We evacuated the buildings.” Dalcourt shrugged, that quintessentially French gesture. “A few died, four I think, at the beginning, when l’endroit was yet very small. The first were old, dead in their beds, not unexpectedly. It was not until the child died, the third to die, that anyone began to suspect mischief. He was a sturdy child, twelve years old, strong and healthy—no reason for him to be dead.”

  Harry’s face was grim as he nodded. “Yeah. It went like that in London too, and Manchester. We went looking for magic and found nothing. Absolutely nothin’ at all. And others died before we figured out that was what killed ‘em.”

  Dalcourt scowled. “But we have not been able to keep everyone out. Many avoid it because they think it is cursed. Others do not believe in curses. They think their little spells will save them. There are always those—thieves, or the desperate—who will go into these places for shelter or to see what they can steal. And the young and foolhardy dare each other to brave what frightens them. Some of them die. Two last month.”

  The two men stared morosely at the dead trees lining the dead street another long moment before Dalcourt spoke again.

  “The Conseil Française thanks you for sharing your discovery before any more people died. We cannot force fools to give up their foolishness.” He paused. “I thank you, personally.”

  Harry gave a brisk nod. “No worry.”

  “No. The worry is how to stop it before it destroys us all.”

  “Right.” Harry looked Dalcourt in the eye. “You’re a clerk, right? A bureaucrat with the city. Not a magician.”

  Dalcourt stiffened slightly. “That is correct, Monsieur.”

  “Terrific. That’s exactly what I need.” Harry took a deep breath of air, swinging his arms as he stared deep into the dead zone. “I’m going in there. If I get into trouble, I’m countin’ on you to come pull me out. You’re not attuned to magic, so it won’t affect you like it does me, right? I won’t go out of your sight. You wait here, and watch. If I keel over, you come in and drag me out. Understand? I swear you’ll be fine. It won’t hurt you, not goin’ in for just that long. Will you do it?”

  Dalcourt drew himself to attention and nodded in almost a salute. “D’accord. I will do it. You can rely on me.”

  Harry gave him a return salute. “All right then.”

  He took several more deep breaths and blew them out again, facing the dead trees. “All right, then,” he repeated. One more breath and he stepped forward, into the dead zone. L’endroit de la mort.

  He strode forward normally, past the first pair of trees in their sidewalk spaces, but his face began to pale and his breath came quicker, in shallow gasps.

  “Monsieur?” Dalcourt called.

  Harry pushed onward, beginning to stumble on the pitted, crumbly paving. He veered toward one of the elegant buildings and examined its surface. The stone facing was discolored and eroding as well, the magic and the life stripped from it. A faint skittering sound echoed along the empty avenue and Harry’s head jerked up.

  “There—” he called out. “Did you hear that?”

  “Non, monsieur. I heard nothing.”

  Leaning against the wall, Harry struggled to breathe without sound, listening intently. The noise grew louder, took on a metallic tone. Harry bent, looked down the barred stairway to a lower-level entrance, and saw a hole through the building’s foundation. A hole big enough for a large dog to pass through—something bloodhound-sized.

  “Wot in blazes—?” Harry wiped clammy sweat from his face and searched for the gate giving access through the black iron fence. The metal wasn’t corroding. It was devoid of magic, but it wasn’t dead or dying, like the stone.

  The gate was locked, but that wouldn’t stop Harry. He’d learned many useful things during a childhood in the Seven Dials. By the time he had the gate open, the skittering had become clanking, and he needed the support of the iron railing to remain upright. He took a deep breath and was seized by a coughing fit.

  When it passed, he wiped his streaming eyes and opened them onto a horror coming through the hole below. Made of bits of metal turned from other purposes—plates off a furnace, spoons bent and flattened, riveted to melted tea trays—it resembled a nightmare insect more than anything, with multiple legs. And multiple stingers—sharpened knives bristled from oddly jointed arms.

  Harry scrambled back, letting the gate clang shut. Deprived of his support, he fell to the ground, scooting backward like a crab on hands and feet.

  “Monsieur Tomlinson!” Dalcourt dashed into the dead zone, intent on rescue.

  “No, stay back!” Harry waved him off as he rolled to his knees and convulsed in another fit of coughing.

  Dalcourt ignored him, lifting the bigger man to his feet in a burst of fear-powered strength as the metal creature reached the top of the stairs and clanged into the fence railing.

  “Should’ve found a bigger clerk,” Harry mumbled, trying to stand on his own. “Bigger’n me, any road.”

  “I am big enough,” Dalcourt retorted. “And there is none more determined. My family lived next to the house where Louis Martine—the child—died. Ma mere was frail for months after we moved away.”

  The monstrous machine cut through the fence railings faster than Harry and Dalcourt could stagger away, using some sort of saw—clippers combined with a fierce heat. It broke through just as Harry tripped over a pit in the paving and fell to his knees, taking Dalcourt with him. The thing clanked toward them, its mode of travel awkward, ominous, and relentless, until abruptly, it froze.

  Harry’s head lifted. He sniffed. “Smell that?”

  Dalcourt sniffed as he continued his fight to get Harry upright again. “It is only the river. It stinks as always.”

  “It’s life.” Harry planted both hands on the stones beneath his knees. The paving had been cut and minimally shaped, but otherwise the stones were the same substance they’d been when pulled from the earth. “There’s magic in these stones. Not much, but it’s there. And I could swear it wasn’t there ten minutes ago. Two minutes ago.”

  He dragged in a deep breath and paused, as if waiting for another bout of coughing to strike. It didn’t. Finally, he allowed the slender clerk to drag him to his feet.

  “And look,” Harry said, pointing. “That monstrosity—it’s retreating. It can’t come where there’s magic.”

  The creature was indeed sidling slowly back to its stairwell, scraping step by multilegged step, as if being driven back.

  Abruptly, Harry shouted with laugh
ter, snatching off his hat and tossing it high in the air. “They’ve done it, Dalcourt,” he cried. “The council—one of the magicians—somebody ‘as figured out how to stop this bloody mess from spreadin’, how to drive it back. It’s over! Nothing left but the cleanin’ up.”

  Dalcourt stared warily, hopefully at the other man. “Do you mean it? Can it be so?”

  “Course I mean it. What else can it be? Feel.” Harry grabbed the Frenchman’s hand and slapped it against the stone flower box at the curb. “There’s magic there. A minute ago there wasn’t. Now there is.”

  He plunged his hands deep into the soil in the box and brought them up again. Dry, sandy grains clung to his skin like glitter, nothing like loamy topsoil, but no longer the dead ashy stuff that had filled it moments before.

  “I will have to take your word for it, Monsieur.” Dalcourt felt his way along the stone briefly before giving up. “I have no sensitivity to magic. I am also tone deaf.”

  Harry clapped Dalcourt on the shoulder, leaving a perfect sand-colored handprint on the black twill suiting. “Come on, man, let’s go find out ‘ow they did it. An’ call me ‘Arry.”

  “Oui, ‘Arry. And I am Armand.”

  “Pleased to know you.”

  The two men shook hands. Harry slung an arm around Armand’s shoulder as they marched back up the boulevard. “An’ thanks for the rescue. I ‘ate to think ‘ow that thing might’ve cut through me, if it caught me.”

  “It is, as you say, no worry, ‘Arry. I am pleased to be of service.”

  ———

  At her cottage inherited from old Ilinca, Amanusa collected the few bits that held memories of her lost family. The lace collar her mother had knitted. Her brother’s cap. Her father’s shaving cup and razor. They retrieved Jax’s frock coat and overcoat from beneath her bed. He looked much more elegantly turned out than she when he put them on, despite his now-grimy shirt.

  It didn’t matter. Stationmasters didn’t care what you wore if you had money for a ticket, and Jax assured her their supply was ample. She piled everything she wanted to take on the blanket without holes, and tied it into a bundle which Jax threw over his shoulder. He refused to let her carry anything, saying that until he ran out of arms and his back filled up, the burdens were his.